Filthy Rich faces many challenges as the head of Barnyard Bargains, some of which you wouldn't expect. One of the most dramatic examples of this: cart retrieval. Ponies have a bad habit of stealing shopping carts from Barnyard Bargains, apparently thinking that they can be easily replaced. Except that's not the case — it actually costs him quite a lot of money, particularly with how frequently he has to replace them. As a result, one of the things he and his staff has to do quite often is to try and retrieve those carts from these unthinking scoundrels, risking verbal and even physical abuse in the process.
Filthy Rich's staff are quite loyal to him. So, of course, when a promise of a way to end this unpleasant duty is provided, they're naturally quite interested...
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Tropes found in this story include:
- Animate Inanimate Object: Invoked, discussed and played with. As part of the Continuum's tradition of subverting A Wizard Did It, this is a spell that's more or less restricted to the realms of theory only, as in practice it's too flawed and dangerous: animated objects don't have eyes, which means that even if given some form of map to operate by, there's no way that they won't simply run into anypony who happens to have the bad luck to get in their way.
- Awesome, but Impractical: The Flim-Flam Brothers' latest scheme, not just in terms of what it's marketed as, but also in its true purpose: to enchant the carts into grabbing stuff from the shelves and carrying it back to the Brothers, essentially shop-lifting on a massive scale.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: Twilight's opinion of the Flim-Flam Brothers is that they have great ideas to start with, but they can't be bothered to follow through, resulting in shoddy end-products.
- Call-Back: References are made to other Continuum stories in which the Brothers made a nuisance of themselves in Ponyville.
- Fantastic Slurs: At the story's climax, the Brothers refer to other ponies as "shears", essentially a ponyfication of "sheep", referencing their belief that other ponies exist to be conned out of their money and property to support the Brothers.
- Gambit Roulette: Mr. Rich mentions that the Brothers' scheme probably would never have gotten even as far as it did if they hadn't happened to run into the one pony in Ponyville who's allergic to the mulling spices in apple cider, and so never attends Cider Day.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: Twilight and Ratchette create a simple cart-rental lock system where customers have to use a half-bit coin to take a cart. Naturally, pony laziness, entitlement and stupidity makes it into a farce.
- Laser-Guided Karma: A long, long legacy of petty crimes finally catches up with the Flim-Flam Brothers, as their latest scheme allows Filthy Rich and some two hundred ponies, all with a grudge, to finally catch the two and dish out some justice. Mainly because the sound of the "automated shoplifting" carts approaching drowned out the sound of the vengeful ponies following the carts to the brothers' lair.
- Mundane Solution: When the Flim-Flam Brothers' "security system" for the carts goes out of control, Twilight stops it by shattering the "control rod" that the spell is keyed into.
- Mythology Gag: Naturally, as a story in which Flim and Flam are the closest thing to the Big Bads, plentiful references are made to their first appearance.
- Oh, Crap!: As soon as Jestine mentions that the ponies who sold her the new security system were unicorns who sung, Mr. Rich's tail starts to twitch violently.
- Perpetual Poverty: Implied; when Twilight and Mr. Rich have a brief discussion about her payrate as the Ponyville Librarian, Mr. Rich winces at Twilight's salary and resolves to talk to Mayor Mare about it, implying she's actually being paid fairly poorly given her role.
- Too Dumb to Live: Openly discussed by Rich and Twilight, who muse about why the Flim-Flam Brothers keep coming back to Ponyville, given that just about every time they've been here, they've had their schemes foiled — once by being caught by the Princesses themselves! They ultimately suggest that it may be because Ponyville was their first ever major failure that they can't resist trying to come back for it, a sort of pride-fueled revenge.
